belief

A Northern Ireland court found Ashers Baking Company guilty of discrimination after it refused to bake a cake calling for same-sex couples to be allowed to marry. But the news is not necessarily as good as it might seem for those wanting full inclusion.

Twenty years ago, many public commentators believed that religion was dead, or at least 'on the way out'. How wrong that proved. Simon Barrow looks at how the conversation about faith is deepening and broadening in the face of growing religious and non-religious diversity.

As we report elsewhere on Ekklesia (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17645), a new, comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life finds that more than eight-in-ten people worldwide identify with a religious group -- while the number of those unaffiliated with religion is on the rise, and now constitutes the third-largest global belief group.